The Catastrophizer: What if Everything Goes Wrong? w/Dom & Waleed 🏳️🌈 A Queer Recovery Podcast 🎙️The Catastrophizer: What if Everything Goes Wrong? w/Dom & Waleed 🏳️🌈 A Queer Recovery Podcast 🎙️
At The CCC
A queer recovery round‑table looks at catastrophising, trauma and anxious dating, blending humour and frank storytelling with familiar 12‑step tools. The hosts and guests share real‑life examples of worst‑case thinking and how community, honesty and simple actions can help quiet the inner catastrophiser.
51:08•26 Oct 2026
The Catastrophiser in Your Head: Queer Recovery, Worst‑Case Thinking and Finding Safety
Episode Overview
- Catastrophising is described as a chain of ‘what if’ thoughts that quickly drift away from reality and can make drinking, using or self‑harm feel more tempting.
- Simple 12‑step tools like talking to a trusted friend and using the serenity prayer are presented as practical ways to interrupt spirals and regain perspective.
- The speakers stress that in moments of overwhelm, the first responsibility is to seek safety and calm the nervous system rather than forcing yourself to push through.
- Relationships that work tend to be those where both people share values, commit to coming back to each other and accept that discomfort is part of growth.
- Humour, honesty and queer community spaces like retreats and the Castro Country Club are highlighted as key supports when the ‘committee’ in the head gets loud.
“I go from my package didn’t get here to my life isn’t worth living, I’m going to be living under the bridge.”
What are the common struggles and victories in addiction recovery? This candid chat from the Castro Country Club kitchen tackles one many people know too well: the catastrophiser in your head who insists everything is about to fall apart. Hosts Anthony, Jordan and Lewis sit down with guests Dominic and Waleed, two queer fellows in recovery from Los Angeles, to talk about the “committee” in their minds and the member that always expects the worst.
Waleed jokes that his brain goes from “my package didn’t get here” to “my life isn’t worth living, I’m going to be living under the bridge” in no time at all, while Dominic shares how quickly multiple problems can snowball into suicidal thinking even in sobriety.
You’ll hear how catastrophising can actually be rewarded at work—Waleed’s job in tech literally requires him to imagine how everything might break—yet becomes dangerous when those same mental habits run unchecked in relationships and recovery. Anthony offers a raw story about a new romance, where anxiety, old trauma and a resting‑bitch‑face date led to blocking, sobbing and a week of mental spirals before an honest conversation brought things back from the brink.
The group keeps things funny and warm, even while talking about depression naps, hypervigilance, trauma, and the “fire alarm” nervous system that can’t always tell past from present.
They link these patterns to familiar recovery tools like the serenity prayer, step three and talking to trusted friends, and repeatedly come back to queer community, retreats like Finding Fellowship, and shared language as buffers against that inner voice screaming “what if everything goes wrong?” If your brain loves worst‑case scenarios, this chat might leave you asking: what if, just once, something actually goes right?
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